The Slight Edge

By Engr. Carlos V. Cornejo

This book is full of simple pearls of wisdom but at the same time deep in its impact, “The Slight Edge”, by Jeff Olson is about tiny habits.  The author says that if we do the little good habits on a regular basis they would accumulate and make a big impact in our life.  The subtitle of the book is “Turning Simple Disciplines into Massive Success and Happiness.”

According to the author little habits such as reading a self-help book for five pages a day, or exercising 20 minutes a day, or setting aside a small amount of money for savings is easy to do because they take a little effort. But they are also easy not to do.  Your life will not dramatically change if you do physical exercise for 20 minutes in one day nor will it get messed up if you miss a day of it.  But… If you were to do that little thing every day for a month? A year? A decade? There would be massive results.  The following ideas are the main contents of the book.

Anti-Quantum Leap

Growth in life always follows the slow and gradual farming stages of plant, cultivate and harvest.  But we have been conditioned especially nowadays to the “instant” mentality of instant coffee, instant shopping, instant information, etc.  The same thing with the movies we watch. A love story for example that includes the dating, courtship, romance, struggle, triumph, wedding, and happy life thereafter takes place in just two hours.  We would think that we can do something great in just two hours. But reality is otherwise.  We need to develop the virtue of patience and grind it out before we can acquire success in the important things in life such as marriage, a college degree, financial stability, health, and wisdom.

How is Your Axe?

Abraham Lincoln once said, “If you give me six hours to cut down a tree, I will spend the first four hours sharpening the axe.”  In life, you are the axe, the author says.  If you want to be more productive and effective in your career, you need training or more knowledge and need to invest on educating yourself through books, enrolling for a course or attending a seminar.  Likewise, if you don’t want to get sick and miss work, you need to invest in your health.  You don’t want to be like that logger in the story of Stephen Covey’s book, “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”, who was sawing a tree but with a dull saw.  When someone came to him to tell him that his saw is dull and needs sharpening because it is taking him a long time to cut the tree, he instead replied, “I have no time for that, I am busy cutting this tree.” Often times we neglect to take care of sharpening ourselves because we are busy with the day-to-day affairs of our life until we wake up one day in a hospital with a serious sickness, or realize we have been left out in the workplace, not getting promoted.

Course Correction

A surprising fact about the Apollo rocket mission to the moon was that it was only on course of hitting the moon 3% of the time.  Which means that for at least 97 percent of the time it took to get from the Earth to the moon it was off course.  In life, we will make off course mistakes many times and we should not make a big deal about it.  Just like the Apollo spacecraft we will just have to make many adjustments or course correction to get back on the right track.  If we fail in one or more subjects in college it should not be a reason to stop schooling.  If we fail to stick to our diet in the previous year, begin again the following year until you have acquired enough willpower to succeed.

Integrity

The author says the best measuring stick to know if you are honest and truthful is who you are when no one is watching.  Integrity is important in achieving the slight edge because you will be doing many little virtues or success habits when no one is watching.

Starting Gate Plan

Most of us make a plan and spend a lot of time perfecting that plan.  There is no such thing as a perfect plan because there are too many variables along the way that we don’t have control of that could ruin our plan.  Adjustments with our plan as we progress is inevitable and trying to make a perfect plan at the start would just be a waste of time.   The author says, the purpose of a plan is to get you started or get you out of that starting gate of the race track rather than bring you to the finish line.